The lottery or gaming industry is continuously seeking methods to enhance the gaming experience for players, as well as to increase the benefit for participating retail establishments that sell lottery tickets.
Scratch-off (“instant”) lottery tickets are a mainstay of the lottery industry and are quite popular among players. However, the conventional paper-based and simulated electronic scratch-off tickets have been in use for quite some time and the industry is continuously seeking ways to enhance the tickets and game playing experience so as to continue to attract new players. Such enhancements are, however, limited by the essentially “static” nature of the prize structures associated with such tickets dictated by the security requirements of the associated ticket validation files.
In conventional scratch-off lottery ticket systems, especially those in the United States that are administered by state governments, each winning ticket (or all tickets) is printed with a validation number or code that identifies and links the ticket to a validation file stored in a central host computer maintained by the game administrator, the validation file containing the redemption value of the ticket. Winning tickets are presented by players to lottery agents for redemption, wherein the agent enters ticket identification or validation data from the ticket into an agent terminal using a bar code reader or manually inputting this data. This information is then transmitted to the host computer at the state lottery administration and is used to access the validation file. Typically, there is one record in the validation file for each such winning ticket that contains the redemption value of the ticket. The redemption value is transmitted to the lottery terminal and if the transmitted value matches the printed winning value on the lottery ticket, the agent will pay the prize amount to the player.
Similarly, in certain electronic lottery systems, winning eTicket vouchers are presented by players to lottery agents or lottery validation systems for redemption. In many cases, in particular where the eTicket has a high value, the lottery agent or system will transfer eTicket identification or validation data from the eTicket into an agent terminal via a bar code or by manually inputting this data. This information is then transmitted to the host computer at the state lottery administration where and used to access the validation file, in particular the record in the validation file for such winning eTicket that contains the redemption value of the ticket. This redemption value is then transmitted to the agent terminal and if the transmitted redemption value matches the printed winning value on the voucher, the agent will pay the prize amount to the player.
With such conventional systems, the validation file contains a fixed or static prize value for all tickets that contain a winning prize value. However, while maintaining a static prize value for each ticket in the validation file has been considered desirable from a security standpoint, maintaining the static value reduces the flexibility of lottery administrations to create new types of games and to compensate for various problems such as the problem described above.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,153,206 proposes a system and method wherein provision is made for the instant lottery tickets to have variable redemption values by allowing the prize codes in the validation file to be changed under certain predetermined circumstances. At least some of the lottery tickets in the game, whether printed or electronically simulated, are provided with play indicia under a scratch-off coating that indicates that the redemption value of that lottery ticket is variable under certain predetermined criteria. Using the host computer, personnel at the lottery administration can change the prize codes and therefore the redemption value of these instant lottery tickets according to the predetermined criteria (such as the termination of a game). A player can have the option to redeem an instant lottery ticket for a first value or wait until after termination of the game where a possibly higher redemption value might be assigned to that ticket due to the host computer randomly selecting that ticket to change its prize code to a greater value.
Although the '206 patent suggests a means to provide a variable prize structure to instant lottery ticket game structures, the proposed solution relies on eventual human intervention and modification of the validation file. This aspect is undesirable from a security aspect.
The present invention seeks methods and game structures that allow a variable prize structure for instant lottery ticket games yet preserves security of the validation file structure.